After the Democrats’ drubbing in last November’s election, the informal network of leaders and institutions that loosely guides the Left began the task of regrouping. The network has shifted politically from the days of Bill Clinton and the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. Today, many groups look to Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio for inspiration; the key think tanks are places like the Center for American Progress in Washington and the smaller New York–based Roosevelt Institute; and behind many of the organizations is a network of mega-rich donors called the Democracy Alliance.

As these liberal strategists took stock, most acknowledged that the Democratic side had genuine underlying problems that needed to be fixed. And while the prescriptions they offered varied, one of the common themes that gained momentum was that the Democratic Party needed to strongly identify itself with the fight against economic inequality. For many progressives, the argument was not simply that ending economic inequality was the right thing to do; it was that a populist campaign built around this theme would mobilize what strategists call a “new American majority” or a “rising American electorate”—allowing Democrats to take back the country that they thought they had won in November 2008.

Can this actually work? I would like to think so; the goal of reducing economic inequality is certainly worthwhile. And many of the policies that progressives are promoting under the umbrella of their developing anti-inequality crusade—from raising the minimum wage to requiring paid sick leave to strengthening bank regulation to increasing spending on science, education, roads, and bridges—have merit. But after talking to leaders of this network in recent weeks, and reading carefully the papers and essays that promote the new strategy, I have my doubts about whether a political campaign built around these kinds of proposals will, in fact, create a new Democratic majority.